Don't Wipe Your Nose With This Map

by Stephen J. Gertz

Evelyn Mulwray: It's a handkerchief!
[slap]
Jake Gertz: I said I want the truth!
Evelyn Mulwray: It's a map…
[slap]
Evelyn Mulwray: It's a handkerchief…
[slap]
Evelyn Mulwray: A handkerchief, a map.
[More slaps]
Jake Gertz: I said I want the truth!
Evelyn Mulwray: It's a handkerchief AND a map!

The Travelling Handkerchief  has come to town, Fairburn's Map of the Country Twelve Miles Round London by E. Bourne, printed on calico, 590 x 540 mm, in 1831, a scarce, early handkerchief map.

The map is circular, and reaches Teddington in the south west, clockside to Norwood, Harrow on the Hill, Chipping Barnet, Dagenham, Purley and Kingsston, wherever they are. I'm in Los Angeles, clockside to Westwood, harrowing on Barrington, Pico and Sepulveda; what do I know? This cartographical Kleenex™ is decorated by vignette views of Chelsea and Greenwich Hospitals in the bottom corners, and a banner heralding the title is held aloft in an eagle's beak.

Washington D.C. based on
Samuel Hill's engraving of Andrew Ellicott's plan.
Printed in Boston, c. 1792.

Handkerchief maps date back to the late 18th century. Examples featuring the plan for Washington D.C. werre sold as "'an authentic plan of the Metropolis of the United States,' advertised as an accurate guide for the prospective purchaser of lots but also as 'a very handsome ornament for the parlor or counting room" (Luria, Capital Speculations: Writing and Building Washington, p. 14). These handkerchief maps are believed to have been printed in Boston in 1792 in connection with "the sale of lots in the new 'Federal Town'" (Works Progress Administration, Washington: City and Capital, p. xiv).

Map of the Baltic theatre of the Crimean War
Paris, Dopter, c.1855.
Engraved map, printed on silk. 650 x 610mm.
Map of the Baltic Sea during
the Crimean War, when the British and French
sent their fleets to blockade St Petersburg.
It is decorated with vignettes of St Petersberg,
Kronstadt, naval scenes and French and British coat-of-arms.

During the 19th century, the British Army's Quartermaster-General Department in India issued handkerchief maps of Delhi and Attock for use by their troops, and they were published as souvenirs during the Crimean War.

The Absent-Minded Beggar.
London, the Daily Mail Publishing Co. Ltd, c.1899.
Linen handkerchief printed in blue, 460 x 470mm.
Printed handkerchief published by the Daily Mail
to rise funds for the "Soldiers' Families Fund"
after the outbreak of the Second Boer War (1899-1902).

Guildhall Library in London has an example of The Travelling Handkerchief in its collection and of another handkerchief map scarcity, An Illustrated Map of London, published in 1850.

Anonymous.
London and its Environs for 1832.
Engraving on cotton. 915 x 890mm.

Handkerchief maps were issued to U.S. Air Force servicemen during WWII as escape maps if shot down over enemy territory. On acetate rayon, linen, or silk, they were lightweight, waterproof, hard to tear and tough to disintegrate; they were able to take a beating yet still fulfill their purpose. The British also issued handkerchief maps to their air force crews and ground troops in all theaters of operation.

The Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection at University of Wisconsin has sixteen mid-20th century handkerchief maps of U.S. states, Canada, the 1939 World's Fair, etc. in its collection.

Surviving eighteenth and nineteenth century handkerchief maps in collectible condition are quite rare.

Jake Gertz: My nose is bleeding, gimme your handkerchief.
Walsh: Forget it, Jake, I'm lookin' for Chinatown. It's on here somewhere.
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BOURNE, E. The Travelling Handkerchief. Fairburn's Map of the Country Twelve Miles Round London. London: John Fairburn, 1831. Engraved map printed on calico. 590 x 540mm.

Howgego 216 (3).
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The Travelling Handkerchief and other British handkerchief map images courtesy of Altea Gallery, with our thanks.

Image of Washington D.C. handkerchief map courtesy of George Washington University GW Magazine, with our thanks.

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Astonishing Gandhi Archive Estimated $622,000-$870,000 At Sotheby's

By Stephen J. Gertz

A highly important and revealing archive of letters, papers, and photographs of M.K. Gandhi, one of the towering figures of the twentieth century, comes to auction on July 10, 2012 at Sotheby's -London. The trove is estimated to sell for €500.000 - €700,000.($622,000 - $870,000).

The archive was the possession of Hermann Kallenbach (1871-1945), a German Jew and successful architect originally from East Prussia who had settled in Johannesburg and was Gandhi's constant companion during the great man's last decade in South Africa. They met in 1904.

"He used to say to me often that when I was deserted by the whole world I would find him to be a true friend going with me, if need be, to the ends of the earth in search of Truth..." (M.K. Gandhi, March 25, 1945).

The years that followed the initiation of their friendship saw Gandhi's political maturation and spiritual growth, the period that prepared him for his future return to and activism in India. Kallenbach played a key role in Gandhi's life not only as someone who arguably knew him better than anyone else  but who played a unique role in Gandhi's transformation from lawyer to Mahatma.

This was not a friendship of equals. Kallenbach became one of the first believers in Gandhi's philosophy and struggled to follow his strict and exacting regime. Kallenbach became deeply involved in the struggle for Indian rights in South Africa, was imprisoned in 1913 for doing so, followed Gandhi from vegetarianism to increasingly restricted diets, practiced sexual abstinence, and adopted a simple, communal lifestyle.

In 1910 he bought a 1,100 farm twenty miles from Johannesburg and turned it over to Gandhi. The two were closely involved in managing the farm. The archive documents the farm's purchase and the friends' acquisition of fruit trees, as well as arguments with neighbors over grazing rights.

It was Gandhi's aim to have Kallenbach return with him to India via Britain in 1914 but the declaration of war between Britain and Germany occurred while they were at sea. Upon their arrival in England Kallenback was declared an enemy alien and was interned for the duration of hostilities, afterward returning to Johannesburg. Gandhi had made his way to India but the two friends never lost contact.

In poignant letters the archive reveals Kallenbach's deep intimacy with Gandhi's family; he was something of a surrogate father to Gandhi's four sons, two of whom had remained in South Africa. Their letters, along with those from other family members to Kallenbach, provide the richest source yet for insight in Gandhi's personal life in India.

Kallenbach would not see Gandhi again until 1937 when he visited his friend and remained in India for two years.

This extraordinarily rich archive stands alongside the main group of Gandhi's letters to Kallenbach (sold at Sotheby's in December 1986) as a testament to this hugely significant figure in Gandhi's life and important member of his inner circle. It is a key and crucial biographical source for Gandhi.

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Images courtesy of Sotheby's, with our thanks.
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A Bad Hair Day In Tibet

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1903, fearful that the Chinese were on the verge of granting Tibet to Russia  and endangering their Raj in India, the British sent a military expedition into Tibet to prevent the rumor from becoming a reality.

The commander of the expedition, Sir Francis Younghusband, brought along British civil servant and photographer John Claude White to document the campaign. White took a series of seventy photographs which were collected in an album c. 1905. Amongst the platinum prints and two folding panoramas is this striking image of Tibetan nuns.

Considering that Buddhist nuns are required to keep their hair cropped short it is unclear why this group allowed their hair to grow to such impious length. As recently as 2002, the Chinese were imprisoning Tibetan nuns and forcing them to let their hair grow out, the least offensive of their many humiliating punishments.

The Tibetans were none too happy with the British incursion, the Chinese even less so, and the British were none too kind to the Tibetans. Brigadier-General James Ronald Leslie Macdonald, leading a military force of over 3,000, including Nepalese Gurkhas, faced off against 3,000 Tibetan troops armed with muskets at the Battle of Guru, and a very short battle it was. After  negotiations to head things off failed, confusion ensued and the shooting began. The British, armed with Maxim machine guns, mowed down between 600-700 Tibetan troops. The rest were allowed to peacefully retreat. Younghusband, who now assumed command of the British army, marched into Lhasa and negotiated a treaty with the Regent, who declared, "When one has known the scorpion [China] the frog [Britain] is divine."

The British military mission ended in 1904, unpopular at home and everywhere else.

This album was recently at Bonhams for auction. It sold for £38,400 ($61,592), inclusive of buyer’s premium.
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[WHITE, JOHN CLAUDE]. An album of important images taken by John Claude White during Sir Francis Younghusband's Tibet Mission of 1903-1904. 70 platinum prints and 2 folding panoramas, images approximately 160 x 210mm., captioned on the mounts, contemporary half green morocco, lettered 'TIBET' on the upper cover, sailcloth chemise, oblong folio, [c.1905]
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Image courtesy of Bonhams.

Booktryst thanks Bookdealer for the lead.
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A Few "Unknown Unknowns" From India's Rare Book World

Thiruvananthapuram Padmanabha Swamy Temple Complex.

 Sreekumar (no other name provided), a resident of Vanchiyoor, a neighborhood in  the ancient  city of Thiruvananthapuram, the capitol of the Indian state of Kerala, has a rare book he'd like to sell.

It is a copy of The Book of Psalms translated into Malayalim, one of the languages of Southern India., spoken by six million people.  Printed in 1848 by the Church Mission Press in Kottayam (the first town in India to achieve 100% literacy, in 1989) for the Madras Auxiliary Bible Society, it is one of the old and rare books bequeathed to him by his father.

The Legislative Museum.

He tried to sell it on eBay. No takers. The market for copies of The Book of Psalms in Malayalim is, apparently, small to non-existent. In the West.

He has a few other old books. About five hundred. They are not cataloged. One, Vrikshayurvedam, prescribes methods to change the characteristics of a tree.

“I have heard that using the methods in the book, one can change the shape of a leaf or can get the desired colour of cotton from a cotton plant,” Sreekumar said.

 City View.

He took it to Indian scientist N. Gopalakrishnan, who informed him that this book was  rare and of value. And - word got around - a Japanese academician found out about it and requested a photocopy, which Sreekumar was kind to send to her.

Another Indian rarity in his collection is Kakshapudam, which is about black magic.

“It has almost all black magic methods," Sreekumar, age 51, said, "including Uchchadanam, both in Sanskrit and its translation. One can easily perform black magic using this. However, I never tried,” he quipped.

His father, an avid collector with, apparently, the means to collect, died when Sreekumar was six years old. Sreekumar, an avid reader, has been trying to care for the books ever since. Not too successfully.

“I try to keep them away from dirt and insects. Still, I lost many of them,” Sreekumar said. “Once, I saw an article by [local journalist] Malayinkeezhu Gopalakrishnan, which refers to a souvenir released during the shashtipoorthi [wedding ritual] of Sir C P Ramaswamy Iyer. It said there were only 100 copies of it. I had a faint memory of seeing one of its kind. When I checked, it was all damaged in moisture. It was disheartening."
 

The Royal Palace at Thiruvananthapuram.

Thiruvananthapuram's climate is deadly to books, and is in a perpetual state of identity crisis: Is it a tropical savannah or tropical monsoon climate? It can't decide so it doesn't bother with seasons.

The mean maximum temperature is 93 degrees F. That's the mean, not average. Half the time it's higher than that. The mean minimum is 69 degrees F. Humidity routinely hovers above 90%. Basically, it's Nature's schvitz bath, great for the skin, perhaps, and a natural way to rid the body of toxins. Poison, however, to paper. During summer, the entire state of Kerala is prone to gale force winds, storm surges, cyclone-related torrential downpours, occasional droughts, and rises in sea level. Batten down the bookshelves.

A building in one of the city's "Technoparks."

 A bit of background. Thiruvananthapuram is located on the southwestern coast of India and is ringed by low, lush green mountains. Gandhi referred to it as "The evergreen city of India." It has a rich cultural background, has libraries all over, is an academic hub, and center for IT R&D; it's one of India's Silicone Valley cities. Literacy is 89.36%. It is one of India's major media centers. It is the capitol if India's most literate and socially developed state. Its population is 779,000.

But no one seems to know much about these books and their market, as opposed to scholastic, value. And it is disconcerting to know that, despite twenty-five years of working with rare books, I have no idea what these books are, and have not been able to find a trace of them in the usual (and a few unusual) reference sources; I'd never even heard of them until yesterday.

The only saving grace is that, up until recently, the entire rare book trade in India and its rarities fell into  Donald Rumsfeld's black hole of intelligence, "unknown unknowns."

 "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting 
to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; 
there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; 
that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. 
But there are also unknown unknowns -- 
the ones we don't know we don't know."

Now, at least, its trade and a few of its rare books are "known unknowns."

Meanwhile, Sreekumar wants to sell his Book of Psalms in Malayalim. He'd like to use the proceeds to help with his copying shop and finance the preservation of his father's collection of rare books.

Padmanabhaswamy Temple Tower during the LakshaDeepam Festival.

Good luck to you sir. Perhaps you can sell it through Infibeam, India's answer to Amazon.com, which is soon introducing rare books to its mix.

More to the point, how do we find out more about these books and, at least, some of the other  rare "unknown unknowns"? Indian occult, Indian  botanical science, Indian in-translation Bible lit.  An intriguing start.

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Thanks to India Express.com for the lead.

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Meet The Indian Amazon

 Maria Tallchief as The Firebird.

No, not Maria Tallchief, the celebrated Native-American prima ballerina.

Rather, Infibeam, India's version of Amazon.com.

Infibeam began life as an online retailer of new (and used) cars, (don't miss the 2010 Tata Nano CX), moved into other product categories, including books, introduced an eBook reader, the Pi, its own mobile phones, and is now taking orders for its competitor to the iPad, the Phi.
 

The Infibeam Pi. (Hand not included with purchase).

 

 Now, it is getting into the used and rare book business, offering used copies of new or newish books and, when they soon open the site to independent sellers, rare books as well.

 

The Infibeam Phi.

The Infibeam website looks suspiciously as if it was designed by an avatar of Jeff Bezos from Delhi.

 

Jehfawar Bezohandas, as portrayed by young Ben Kingsley.

 India has a thriving used and rare book trade; open shops abound. Let's hope Infibeam doesn't kill them and wind up as Kali, the ferocious Hindu goddess and Destroyer of Worlds.

•••

Question: When someone in India has a tech issue or requires customer assistance from an online retailer is their call routed to a service center in Kansas?

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With thanks to  Plugged.in for the lead.

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Religious and Spiritual Books Bring Zing Back to Delhi Book Fair

The woes of the recession have turned into wows at this year’s Delhi Book Fair.

Attendees are grabbing religious and spiritually-themed books off the shelves as if they were Kali, the multi-armed Hindu goddess of time and change, and redeemer of the universe, who has, apparently, redeemed an Indian book market hit hard by the global recession.

Books on the philosophies and meditation techniques of spiritual gurus, general religion, self-help guides and Indian mythology are leading sales at the Delhi Book Fair, now in its fifteenth year.

Just Say No To Crime and Fiction
The boom in religious books trade at the fair, say publishers, reflects the larger trend in the market, which has seen a sharp rise in the demand for spiritual books over the last three years.

"The demand for religious books is unbelievable. Everybody wants peace in life. There has been too much of crime and fiction. Over the last three years, we have seen a sharp rise in the demand for yoga, meditation, self-help and spiritual books. Even teenagers are buying spiritual books," Ajay Mago, publisher of Om Books, told Madhusree Chatterjee of the Indo-Asian News Service.

Consequently, books on Swami Vivekananda, Osho, Baba Ramdev, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, J. Krishnamurthi and a host of new age gurus - some written by the spiritualists themselves - are disappearing from the shelves by the dozens, along with the new reprints of the Bhagavad Gita, Ramcharitmanas, Vishnu lores, Buddhist texts, translations of Vedas, mythology and new tomes on palmistry and yoga.

The buyers are mostly high school and college students, young professionals and homemakers - in the age-group of 17 to 35.

The annual fair attracts national and international publishers, librarians, researchers, academicians, writers, students and book lovers from all walks of life.

Delhi Book FairAugust 29-September 6, 2009.
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